How many jobs might Hard Rock casino bring to Kern County?

It might take five years, it might take a decade, but Kern County is apparently getting a Hard Rock Cafe-branded hotel and casino.

At least that's the hope of the Tejon Tribe of Kern County, which announced an agreement this week with Hard Rock International, the global hospitality company known for its rock 'n' roll-themed restaurants. Hard Rock has agreed to develop and manage a $600 million, 400-room hotel and casino that the tribe has proposed on farmland just west of Highway 99, half an hour south of Bakersfield.

Sandra Hernandez, a council member with the Tejon Tribe, joined The Californian's Robert Price Wednesday on his weekly "One on One" noon webcast to talk about the Tejon Tribe and its vision for the hotel-casino.

Among the topics they discussed:

• The tribe is considering the possibility of building administrative offices, a health-care facility and housing near the hotel-casino, which will occupy 52 acres of the 306-acre parcel the tribe owns near Mettler.

• The hotel-casino would employ 2,000 people — more than twice the number of known Tejon tribal members. There's no such thing as a hiring advantage for tribal members, however. "We're an equal opportunity employer," Hernandez said.

• Hernandez said she expects to maintain good relations and mutual support among the management of the Tejon's Hard Rock casino and those of the Eagle Mountain and Tachi Palace gaming casinos in adjacent Tulare and Kings counties, respectively.

Watch this discussion.Stop watching this discussion.

(5) comments

Concerned Citizen...glad to see you're proof reading your comments and using spell check. Your comments are still idiotic, but your spelling is improving. However, every sentence requires punctuation at the end of a sentence, so now you have another issue.

Sandra, you're delusional from the dollar signs in your eyes. Indian casinos do far more harm than any good. Gambling addiction is rampant among American Indians too. The statistics and records are all available for anyone to see the destruction your casino will cause to this community. Oh well

Casinos are there to take your money they don't do anything good for your community in fact they don't like it when you win they want you to lose all they do is promote alcoholism and when people are to be paying the rent they're blowing it in the casino this is not something we need in Kern County

Welcome to the discussion.

Keep it Clean. Please avoid obscene, vulgar, lewd,
racist or sexually-oriented language.PLEASE TURN OFF YOUR CAPS LOCK.Don't Threaten. Threats of harming another
person will not be tolerated.Be Truthful. Don't knowingly lie about anyone
or anything.Be Nice. No racism, sexism or any sort of -ism
that is degrading to another person.Be Proactive. Use the 'Report' link on
each comment to let us know of abusive posts.Share with Us. We'd love to hear eyewitness
accounts, the history behind an article.